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Elaine Mitchener: SWEET TOOTH

Join us for the premiere of SWEET TOOTH, a powerful music theatre performance interrogating historical links between sugar and slavery, by acclaimed vocalist and movement artist Elaine Mitchener.

This ambitious 50 minute music theatre piece uses text, improvisation and movement, to stage a dramatic engagement with the brutal realities of slavery revealed by the historical records of the sugar industry, and to reveal its contemporary echoes.

SWEET TOOTH marks the culmination of five years’ research by Mitchener into our love of sugar and the historical links between the UK sugar industry and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Premiering SWEET TOOTH at Bluecoat engages the work directly with the history of colonialism and transatlantic slavery. The location is especially resonant, as in 1717 the building was originally a charity school for orphans that relied on subscriptions and donations from many families involved in slavery or slave-related industries like sugar, tobacco and cotton.

We’re excited to announce that the performance is being recorded live by Radio 3, and Bluecoat’s bistro bar will be open before the show to welcome audience members ahead of the event’s official start time. Come along early and have a drink before we start.

Please note that the performance will be starting promptly, and late-comers will not be able to enter once it commences.

In partnership with the Centre 151, St George's Bloomsbury and Edge Hill University